How small-scale producers feed the world

Years ago, this was a heated debate: How much of the world’s food do small-scale farmers actually provide?

Was it 35% or 70%?

In today’s email, we will tell you:

• What set off the debate
• What we can conclude from it
• What this teaches us about how to analyze a case — to see the value of small in a political system that unproductively favors giants

1. What set off the debate: How many do the small feed?

The debate about who feeds the world is deeply polarized. Either small farms feed 70% of the world, or they produce only 35% of global food. That’s a world of difference.

The most commonly used and recognized estimate was — and still is — 70%.

In 2009, ETC wrote that small-scale farmers feed 70% of the world’s population in its report “Who Will Feed Us?” When the group published the figure in 2009, it caused a stir, because producing estimates on that scale inevitably involves uncertainty. That uncertainty left room for discussion — although the critics did not have a concrete counterargument. Eventually, the debate subsided, and in ETC’s 2017 edition, they could note that the 70% figure had been accepted by the UN, and by much of both the research community and the private sector.

But then the controversy reignited. In 2021, the 70% figure was challenged in a study by Lowder, Sanchez, and Bertini, which — unlike earlier critiques — offered a concrete counterfigure: only 35% of the world’s food supposedly came from small farms. This aligned with an earlier study by Ricciardi (2018), which had not managed to spark much debate at the time. The claim was later picked up by the popular data-visualization site Our World in Data, which spread it further into the public discussion.

After that, confusion was total. What should one believe? And where should the focus be — on the big or the small?

2. What can we conclude from the debate

When we dig into the details of the debate and the underlying studies, we find that the opposing sides actually agree on several fundamental points. The headlines, however, taste a bit of politics, positioning, and click-bait.

The contours become clearest in ETC’s and seven other organizations’ 2022 response to the criticism — and, surprisingly, their conclusions are even supported by Ricciardi’s later 2021 study (yes, the same lead author who had produced the 2018 study used to contest ETC’s 2009 numbers).

We’ll refer to ETC and the seven organizations as the advocates, and the others as the critics.

Here’s what they agree — and disagree — on:

They agree that small farms are more productive than large ones.

The advocates write that small-scale farmers feed 70% of the world’s population using 25% of agricultural land. The critics write that small farms produce 35% of the world’s food using 12% of total farmland. So how can they agree that small farmers are far more productive, yet still disagree on how many people they feed? That becomes clearer when we examine their differences.

They disagree on what defines a small farm.

The advocates note that it is difficult to set a fixed threshold that meaningfully captures “small” across very different contexts. It depends on where you are — the country, even the region — and what you produce.

When pressed to draw a line, they set it high, at 5 hectares, out of caution, acknowledging how much this varies from place to place. The critics set the limit at 2 hectares.

For comparison, the number of Danish farms larger than 200 hectares (about 280 football fields) is now more than seven times greater than in the early 1980s — suggesting that the difference between 2 and 5 hectares may not be so significant after all.

They disagree on what counts as farmers’ work.

This was surprising when we noticed it — and it’s one of the main reasons for the gap in results. The advocates define farmers as a group of small-scale producers, including agriculture, fisheries, urban farming, livestock, hunting, and gathering. They see it as a class of people with a certain approach to food production and a certain scale. The critics look only at crop farming.

They disagree on the unit of measurement.

The advocates focus on the nutrition produced — we could call that the quality of production — which determines whether food truly nourishes people. You become full, healthy, and strong from the right nutrients, not from “empty calories.”

To illustrate: a major study found a significant decline in nutrients (protein, calcium, phosphorus, iron, riboflavin (B₂), and vitamin C) in fruits and vegetables over the last 70 years. As a result, several media outlets reported that you now need to eat eight supermarket oranges from large, conventional farms to get the same amount of vitamin A as from one orange in the 1950s.

The critics, on the other hand, measure output either by weight (kilograms produced) or commercial value.

They disagree on the measure of success.

The advocates measure how many people gain nourishment — achieving food security and health — in other words, consumption. That’s the real outcome, and what the debate is ultimately about.

The critics measure production — how many kilos or how much commercial value is generated — and take that as a proxy for how many people are fed. The problem is that this assumption is weak.

One obvious reason this matters: much of the food mass produced by large-scale farms goes to feeding animals rather than humans — leading to significant nutritional losses.

To illustrate, Denmark’s Climate Council calculated in 2024 that Danish agriculture feeds minus seven million people on protein — meaning it consumes more than it provides in nutritional terms. This is largely because huge amounts of imported feed are used for livestock, which amplifies those losses.

In other words, it’s highly inefficient when the goal is to feed people.

3. Understanding the value of small in a system of giants

Because of these five key points, the advocates and the critics can agree that small farms are, in fact, more productive than large ones — yet still disagree on the specific categories, definitions, and outcomes.

This shows that to recognize the economies of small, we must pay close attention to categories, measurement units, and success criteria.

If we rely on proxies, simplifying assumptions, or lose sight of the ultimate goal, we risk missing the advantages of small scale altogether. In many countries, political frameworks for competition unproductively favor the large, simply because they are large. For example, most agricultural subsidies in Europe are distributed as area-based support — you get paid for being big, regardless of what or how you produce.

In Denmark, many small farms are not recognized as full-time operations and therefore lack access to the same subsidy schemes and tax benefits as large farms.

Add to that the fact that prices are wrong: large industrial farms do not pay the full cost of polluting with greenhouse gases, pesticides, soil depletion, or disrupting nitrogen cycles through artificial fertilizers.

This once again shows that small-scale producers feed the world despite a system that favors and rewards the giants. Many small-scale producers are poor and struggle precisely because of this. Yet they persist — and play an essential societal role in spite of the system.

Those who succeed economically often do so by redesigning value chains and cutting out middlemen, achieving greater resilience through crop diversification and regenerative techniques, and organizing into associations and cooperatives — such as those described by Vandana Shiva through her work with Navdanya.

If we are to achieve a radical and fair green transition, we must learn to see the value of the economies of small — even within a system that makes them harder to see.

This is why we wrote the book (in Danish) "Smådriftsfordele" which translates into "Economies of Small". We are working to find a publisher to translate it into English. If you would like to get an email when it's available, you can join the waiting list here: https://www.postgrowthguide.com/waitinglist-englishbook